Hopeless Desire
by Kathen
Summary: Angel meets Dark Buffy...


Dark Buffy was reveling in her newly soul-less life; blood from many victims staining her hands and her knife. She knew no one else could see the red tint of her flesh now, like Lady Macbeth trying to get out the spot in her sleep but it wasn't her own guilt she felt but the guilt she knew Angel felt for her.

It was these thoughts that drove her to stop by and see him. She walked into his apartment and knew right away he wasn't there. She made herself comfortable on the couch, kicked her feet up on his coffee table and lit a cigarette, waiting for him.

She heard him outside, his feet shuffling quietly, then the pause as he sensed her. then as the door knob turned and the door swung open slowly, she said into the shadow that he remained hidden with in "Hello Lover. Miss me?"

He walked back to his apartment holding a few blood bags after a little visit to Sunnydale General and stopped in front of the door from a moment, sensing...Buffy, but different. He turned the doorknob and opened the door, walking inside to hear someone greeting him.

His gaze moved, encouraged by his senses, to the voice. Yes, it was Buffy. A pale, smoking, adulterated one...but it was she all the same. He raised an eyebrow, watching a wisp of smoke float up and wane away after a bit, "Hello..Buffy." He pushed the door closed behind him and paused there.

DB smiled at him. She stood up but didn't move any closer to him. "Aren't you going to come in? It is, after all, your apartment."

She noticed the bags of blood in his hand, but decided not to linger on it, for the moment anyway. She looked around his apartment trying to think of something Buffy-like to say but only could come up with, "So.. How have you been?" She smiled at him again and tried to draw him closer with her eyes, pleading with him to not feel uncomfortable around her.

For now anyway.. the incomfortable-ness would surely come later.

''That it is. '' He replied to the apartment being his comment. He saw he look at the blood in his hand for a moment and walked past her to his little refrigerator in the corner and opened the door to put the bags inside then closed it and turned back to her.

He saw her trying expression and walked over to her standing there. He was going to sit but she was standing, ''I've been fine. How've you been? '' He raised his eyebrows a bit to help lighten the growing awkwardness.

DB looked at him, knowing he wasn't dumb, and smirked to herself. He'd never assume she was evil, not Buffy his one true love. She knew they would eventually end up fighting, once he realized who she was. Could Angel stop her? She pondered. "Would he be able to kill her as Buffy had once killed him?

She doubted it.

"So no more Wolfram and Hart? No more helping the evil of this city?" She sat down on his couch again and motioned for him to sit as well. "So then what are you doing now?"

''Better than ever, hm? '' Her confident smirk made him wonder how much 'better', and what exactly 'better' meant in this case.

He could see there was something different about her, his senses just confirmed it, ''Maybe I was after the state of disappearance, but what about you? When you do come looking you're...not you.''

It was his turn for a pause. He figured Wolfram and Hart would come up. He just didn't think she say it the way she did. He hadn't been with them for a while now, but it hit him hard all the same. His eyebrows lowered the way they usually did when he was affronted with something, ''I left them a while ago, actually. '' He crossed his arms, she was acting; toying with him. Still upset over his year as CEO at W&H. That was the only explanation for her smirks and tones.

Or at least, that's the only one he'd accept right then..

"You know, that's really too bad." She looked at him, his face puzzled. "No, I guess you really don't know do you?"

She grabbed his hand lightly and placed it on her face. "You loved her. You really did." She laughed. "She loved you too with all her heart. Kinda stings inside when I think about how Buffy felt for you, because you see, she's gone now." DB smirked and tossed his hand away from her.

She stood up and started to pace the room. "It was the night you fought the black thorn, ya know? She got a call saying you needed her and she followed her heart right to where you should have been. Maybe if you had been there, maybe you could have stopped it, maybe you could have saved her. But maybe this was just supposed to be." Her eyes were dark yet full of pride. She felt so free now that she wasn't afraid to tell him who she really was. In fact it was why Wolfram and Hart had done this, to get to him.

Angel sat down next to her, shifting a bit, "No, no more helping evil. Going back against evil now.."

He returned his look to her, "What about you? What have you been doing that makes you 'better than ever'?" The real question that needed answering, he thought. He couldn't place what he meant by Buffy not being herself.

He didn't really want to either. He wasn't big on changes. Change always meant something bad, like evil or death. Or both.

DB stared down at him. "What's wrong, Angel? You don't recognize your own lover?" She moved closer, running her hand up his arm and moving her face in front of his. "I suppose you'll have to stop me now won't you, Angel?" A smile played at the edges of her mouth as she leaned in and kissed him hard on the lips.

Then straightening up and standing again, she added "If you can of course." She winked at him and sat down on the coffee table across from him. "I've been wondering what you would do to me." She chuckled.


End file.
